


who fear are lost

by Katbelle



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Blood, Character Death, Guns, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-08
Updated: 2011-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katbelle/pseuds/Katbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She just sees the two of them, facing each other from two different sides of the same table. Maybe they miss each other, maybe they can't live without each other. Lots of maybes. And then someone screams.</p><p>When she thinks about this later, she realises that she never heard the bang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who fear are lost

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my own prompt (yes, I'm sad): Erik has this thing - it's absolutely A-okay if someone's pointing a gun at him, he can deflect the bullets, sure. But he falls into a full panic-mode when the gun is pointed at someone he loves. And I mean it, panic, as in I-don't-think-rationally, I-just-act-first-and-think-later-if-there-is-a-later. For some reason, Erik sees that someone is trying to shoot Charles. So he reacts in the simplest way - he just steps in front of the bullet. And is shot, possibly fatally.
> 
> Of course I'm me, so this ended up being different from the prompt. Sorry, myself.

**who fear are lost**

The lecture hall is enormous so it's not difficult to disappear in the crowd. It's enough that she's wearing a stranger's face - some predatory-looking redhead that she'd seen in Los Angeles a week prior - and she's sitting at the far end of the row, surrounded by tall, imposing academics and disgusted politicians. In a way, she's perfectly safe here, a cute girl, maybe a secretary of someone important who didn't bother to show up at the lecture.

If only.

Magneto fidgets beside her, glances around nervously, narrows his eyes, focuses on variety of people lounging in the corners. Something's troubling him, she sees it in the way his shoulders tense, his jaw clenches and his eyes darken, dart around, assessing, calculating.

"What is it?"

He shakes his head and the artificial light catches red streaks in his brown hair. It's so unusual, to see him without the helmet, and so reckless when you consider whose lecture they're attending. But Charles will not find them among all those people, among the constant chitter-chatter, the buzz of their minds; in order to do that, he'd have to actively look for them and he'd never dream of meeting them here. It's better that he doesn't know about their upcoming talk with the young Congressman; he wouldn't approve, after all.

"I have a feeling..." Magneto shakes his head. "It's nothing."

She nods and focuses at the podium where the main guest of the conference is about to make his speech. It's starts better than all the others she'd heard through the years; it manages to catch the attention of the audience, avoids sending half of the people to sleep within the first fifteen minutes. There are a few jokes woven in and she laughs under her breath, thinks about going to have a drink, celebrating, before she remembers that she won't be doing that ever again. A businessman sitting next to her hums in annoyance when Charles mentions mutants and her form ripples a bit, her hand turns blue for a second before she stabilizes it.

Magneto doesn't even notice. With his brows furrowed, he stares at some non-descriptive point a bit to the right from them, high above at the balcony. The lights were dimmed for the purposes of Charles' presentation and she can't see anything of interest there.

Charles' sweet, gentle voice carries around the hall so she almost misses Magneto's sharp intake of breath and a pained "nein" that follows. He literally leaps off his chair and runs towards the podium, jumps onto it and only stops in front of the table Charles is seated at. She doesn't understand what's happening, can't understand because they were supposed to stay put. It was Magneto's decision to keep themselves away from Charles and Alex, who's accompanying his professor.

In the dimmed light she thinks she sees the confused-scared-delighted expression on Charles' face, she thinks she sees Magneto hunch a little, bend forward with a hand clasped over his hear- no, not heart, lower, just a tad. She wants to laugh because maybe Magneto finally cracked and for all that he claims to be against the X-Men, he just can't bring himself to be apart from Charles Xavier.

And then someone screams.

The lights are turned on again and she squints at the sudden brightness. All around her people are standing up and hurrying from the lecture hall, terrified of something. Is it her? She looks at her hands but no, they're pink and normal and _not hers_. But the piercing scream, a Sean-like wail doesn't end, contrary - more voices join in. Someone's hyperventilating behind her, people are pointing at the balcony and finally, finally someone yells:

"He still has that gun!"

And suddenly the world narrows down to what's happening at the podium. She manages to notice two men wrestling another at the balcony - she sees that the third one drops a small, handheld gun that gracelessly falls to the ground floor of the hall where no one wants to touch it - before turning her head and looking at the two men facing each other on two different sides of the same table. And now, with the lights on, she does see that Magneto is clearly hunched, curled into himself. She sees a small stain on the back of his well-tailored suit. Charles is staring as well, at the front of Magneto's shirt and it takes her a moment to realise that what he sees is probably much worse.

Her chair tumbles over as she hurries to the podium. She almost makes it to Magneto's side before his knees give up. Almost but not quite. Charles is there before her.

"Alex, find a telephone," Charles instructs the blond in a quiet, measured voice. It's a testament to how well she knows him, she thinks, the fact that she's the who's not fooled by his calm attire. "Call help. Raven, if you could..."

Of course he recognises her. She's really close now and even if she weren't - even if any of them was still paying attention to the humans around them, inconsequential - he'd still know it's her. He always knows, no matter what.

"Don't bother," Magneto says.

He's rasping, sounds somewhat breathless, but manages to get himself into a more or less sitting position, with his back supported by the table.

"Erik..."

Magneto smiles one of his rare, honest smiles. His teeth are tinged with red. So is the front of his snow-white shirt. And his tie. Pity, she liked this tie, it matched his eyes.

"We need to get you to a hospital." Charles swallows. "It's fine, everything is..."

"No." Magneto coughs. "The bullet pierced my lung. Aside from a major blood loss resulting from internal bleeding, my lung may collapse. It might result in oxygen shortage and cardiac arrest, and this is if I'm lucky enough not to bleed out or drown in my blood first. So really. Don't bother. They won't come. Not fast enough."

Charles blinks. And again and again, and again, he blinks furiously like he always does when he's pretending he's not going to cry.

"Erik, it's not--"

"I've seen enough gunshot wounds to know how this will end." Magneto grins and a few droplets of blood dribble on his chin. "Go ahead. Tell me I'm wrong."

Charles shakes his head and it's enough for her to know that Magneto's telling the truth.

"What happened?" she asks, directs the question at both of them.

"Felt the bullet," Magneto answers. "The gun, it was pointed at Charles."

Anger rises within her and she looks up at the balcony. The man - the man who dared to harm their kind, who dared to try to harm her _brother_ \- was taken away, probably, but it doesn't matter, she'll find him and he'll pay, she'll make sure that lives a long, _long_ time--

"Why?" Charles asks and his voice breaks on this one word, one syllable. He's shaking now, just as if he were the one in danger of going into shock and maybe he is. He's a telepath, he _feels_ their feelings, picks up on them and Magneto is not shielding himself properly. Maybe it's his shock that Charles is picking up on. Maybe it's just Charles. "Why did you-- why not-- you could have _deflected_ the bullet!"

It's Magneto's time to blink.

"... Yes," he answers finally as if it hadn't occurred to him before that yes, he could. He's impulsive, she knows, but this is more than that, when he stood up and ran to the podium - he just acted, without thinking about it. It was instinct, something she understood before Charles found her in that kitchen.

"Then _why_?"

Magne-- no, Erik. This is not something a calculating, ruthless person like Magneto would do. It's something that belongs to Erik, whose mother was shot in front of his eyes. She knows that and she thinks she understands this fear. This fear of someone else being taken. The fear of letting it happen again.

If there's enough of Erik left in Magneto for him to step in front of a bullet when he commands metal, then it's Erik Lehnsherr that sits here, propped by an ugly table. For some reason, it hurts even more.

Erik shrugs. Coughs. More blood appears on his lips, his shirt.

"You have your tricks, I have mine."

Charles grimaces. He wheels himself closer to Erik and her, looks at both of them from high above, from a high horse and moral ground they'll never be able to reach.

"The ambulance is on its way," Alex announces as her runs back into the hall. There are people around them, hovering at the edge of the podium before turning away with blank expressions. Charles must be doing that, she thinks. But he doesn't realise he's doing anything, judging by the look on his face.

"We'll get you to the hospital." He moves closer to Erik and for a moment looks as if he wanted to slid down to the wooden floor of the podium to sit by Erik. He decided against it, it seems. "Then we'll take you back home. Hank's rebuilding Cerebro, he could use your help. We have new students, you'll love them, and your team is welcomed to come and stay as well, it will be fine, we'll get you home and--"

"Stop it." Erik actually rolls his eyes. "Stop blabbing. You're giving me headache." Charles listens for once and shuts up. "And I'm not going anywhere within the next twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes...?"

"That's how long it will take now."

Charles' expression shutters. Her mind flashes back to Cuba, to that desperate, pained expression on her brother's face that appeared when he was looking at her and Erik for the last time. It's similar to the one he's wearing now, only this one is a thousand times worse, more alone than she's ever seen before.

Erik takes a raspy, shaky breath. It whizzes and his face scrunches in pain.

"I'll love you as long as I live," he tells Charles and his tone is clipped as usual, can be read as almost mocking. It's easy to say that he's messing with them, teasing, but she knows better. She knows that he means it. She knows that Charles knows it as well. "Which, ironically, won't be that long."

"Don't," Charles says. He's got angry. That's good. An angry telepath is better than a sad telepath and Erik must understand this. "If I can't-- then you-- you don't _get_ to say this. You just don't."

"Fine."

They fall silent. She keeps her hand over his wound, but it's not helping much. Even Alex sees it, he stares at Erik with wide eyes, uncomprehending, in pain and a bit betrayed.

"In a way I'm fortunate," Erik proclaims suddenly. "I do get my one wish after all."

"War with humans? Quite possibly. It's obvious that the shooter was not a fan of mutants."

Erik laughs. Spits blood is a better term, and his toothy grin is awfully red now.

"No surprises there, but I didn't mean that." His face softens when he looks at Charles and she feels uncomfortable now, like she's interrupting something she shouldn't be witnessing at all. "I meant the fact that, after all, I get to spend the rest of my life with you."

Charles wheels back as if burned. He turns his head to the side and refuses to look at Erik, at her. Minutes pass. Charles is still not looking and Erik is still waiting for an answer and he pales more and more. Charles grips the arms of his chair so hard that his knuckles are white, almost as white as Erik's face now.

"Alles is gut," she hears Erik whisper before he takes - tries to take - a deep breath. "Charles, I..."

She watches Erik pause. She hears him exhales slowly and softly. His shoulders relax, his eyes close and his head falls down onto his chest before rolling to the side. He slumps and it's her arms that are preventing him from sagging completely. There's a small smile frozen on his red red lips and he breathes no more.

Charles turns back to face them with a shocked expression and she gently cradles Erik's body. Charles reaches out to touch Erik's - cold, white, like marble, not metal - cheek, then his eyes move to look at the watch on his left wrist.

"Three more minutes," he says and he sounds so distant that it scares her. She remembers the day mother died, remembers Charles' confusion and detachedness. That was the day she realised how truly terrifying Charles' power is, the day she was afraid of him for the first time. She remembers what he did to one of the maids, and that was all after the death of a woman for whom he never had very strong feelings.

"Three more minutes, it was supposed to be three more minutes," he repeats and his voice borders on hysteria.

She knows what it means. She lets go of Erik's body and gets up. Charles doesn't notice her moving past him, lost in his own mind and his own feelings, currently in a place so far away from this little lecture hall as possible. His eyes are wide and so, so blue, a perfect match for the red of Erik's lips. Red and blue go together better than red and purple.

"We need to go."

She grabs Alex's sleeve and drags him out of the lecture hall. He tries to resist, but she's stronger than him and much more determined. She leads him to the car she and Magneto arrived in just three hours earlier, opens the door and forces him to get inside.

"Why are we leaving the professor?"

"Trust me, it's better to get the hell away from here. Much safer for sure."

Alex looks at her questioningly and she sighs. After all, how is she supposed to explain to him the complicated relationship between her brother and Erik, the nature of all the things they never said and Charles now never will? How to explain the consequences of bottling all that up?

"People often underestimate the magnitude of Charles' ability," she says quietly and starts the engine. "They think that if he were to get angry, he could do anything. They're wrong. While angry, Charles still can control himself. But there's nothing more dangerous than a grieving telepath."

She knows that, probably better than anyone. And she doesn't want to be there when Charles finally snaps. It might take him fifteen minutes, it might take him fifty minutes, but he will crash eventually and his emotions will affect everyone around. In his breakdown, he'll leave a bunch of mindless, empty dolls, crying his tears and living his grief, expressing the emotions, _his_ emotions that he doesn't know how to deal with himself.

"It's better to wait for him at home," Mystique says and means the home that belongs to Raven. "In the end, everything will be fine. Always is."

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Sting's "Shape of My Heart". I really like this song. ALL MY CREYS.


End file.
